


Life And Death Are Things You Just Do When You're Bored

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: SVU, Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite, The X-Files
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Vampires, meditation on life and death disguised as simple crack fic, things remain: unexplained
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's one of those cases that sticks with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life And Death Are Things You Just Do When You're Bored

**Author's Note:**

> The opening scene takes place during the episode, "Slaves", of Law and Order: Special Victims' Unit.  
> The title comes from the song, Fear Is A Man's Best Friend, by John Cale.  
> I am not involved with the production of any of these media, nor is this school. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you and good night.

“No, I think that's it.” He stands.  
“Forty-three minutes,” she replies brightly.  
Sighing, he sits again. “Do you believe in the existence of evil?”  
She shifts in her seat, an expression of unconscious boredom at being asked this question for what, Munch imagines, must be the five hundredth time. But she has to humor him; it's part of the therapeutic process. “I believe,” the wind-up, and the pitch: “that people are capable of terrible things.”  
“I don't mean pedestrian human bullshit that can be explained away with 'He had a bad childhood'. I mean real evil, beyond anything humans can understand or even express. I mean, do you believe in creatures of pure evil?”  
She sighs. “No. No, I don't believe that any human is purely evil.”  
“What if they weren't human?”  
“Are you saying that you think of criminals as less than human?”  
“I'm saying that what if there were creatures who looked human, but weren't?”  
She shifts in her chair again. “Are you talking about demonic possession?”  
His glasses are slipping down his nose. Over the rims, Audrey's a tapestry of soft browns, autumn blooms in a dawn mist. The light's too much. He pushes his glasses back up. “I'm talking about vampires.”  
“People who think they're vampires.”  
“Sure.”  
“Being on Special Victims' Unit, you encounter a lot of sick people.”  
“This was back in Baltimore.”  
She says nothing.  
He continues: “We caught a case. My old partner and I caught a case. There was a body.”

There was a body. A couple of teenage girls looking for a place to be alone with their close, personal friend, Jack Daniels, found it in a culvert. Even Crime Scene took a step back.  
“Shit,” Bolander said, and covered his mouth.  
Munch said nothing. He couldn't take his eyes off the body. It was just a kid. How young, Munch couldn't say. He must have said something, then, because Bolander said, “Huh? Well, the M.E. will give us all of that.”  
The kid has no I.D., so for now, he's just 'John Doe'.  
“John Doe?” says Munch when he sees it in red on the board, “They're just calling him 'John Doe'?”  
“Yeah, that's what we do. If we don't know a victim's name, we call him John Doe,” says Bolander, in that way he has. Munch can't explain it; it's just a way he has of saying things.  
“It's just a kid,” Munch says, softly.  
“So, we compare his fingerprints to what we have in the system. We look at missing persons from the area.”  
“I know all of this.”  
“If you know all of this,” Bolander says in this other way that he has, this way that seems gentle, but is even more insulting than the other way, “then just do it.”  
It's what they do. After this long, someone has to have reported him. Someone has. His name is Laine Petersen, of Towson, Maryland. Born, February 25, 1977. Parents are Martin and Rowena. Divorced, as of 1990. Laine was last seen in his father's home, two days prior to his death.  
“He said Goodnight, and that was the last I saw of him.” This is Martin speaking. “When I didn't see him the next morning, I just thought he'd left for school, early. He did that sometimes,” this is unnecessary, but Munch doesn't think much of it, “But he didn't come home that afternoon. I called his friends. No one knew anything.”

“What did you do?”  
“We went down to Towson, interviewed his friends. They all said the same thing: he was obsessed with a kid named Nothing.”

“Nothing? Like, he didn't have a name?”  
“No,” says a girl called Sioux, like the Native Americans, “His name is 'Nothing'.”  
Munch looks at her over the rims of his glasses. “Somehow, I don't think we're going to find someone registered at this school by the name of 'Nothing'.”  
“It's 'Jason',” the girl says and rolls her eyes, “Jason Duchac. He used to go here.”  
“Used to?” Munch raises his eyebrows.  
“Yeah. I haven't seen him in, like, a week. I thought he moved,” she pouts.  
He thanks her, then moves on to Jason's parents. The mother is distraught, begs for them to find her son. The father doesn't seem to care very much.  
“He wasn't even ours,” he says, his arms crossed over his chest.  
“He was,” the mother says wetly.  
“Someone left him,” counters the father, triumphant, “On our doorstep.”  
“Someone left him on your doorstep,” Munch intones.  
“Fifteen years ago,” says the father, “with a note. I still have it.”  
“May I see it?”  
Without a word, the father leaves the room. No one says anything until he returns, and hands the note to Munch.  
“'His name is Nothing. Care for him and he will bring you luck.' Did you report this to the police?”  
“You would have taken him away,” the mother murmurs, “You wouldn't have let us keep him.”  
“You can't just keep a baby you find on your doorstep. Where did he come from?”  
“We don't know,” says the father, “If someone was so willing to just throw him away, there must have been something wrong with him.”  
“God sent him to us,” the mother sobs- she's crying, by now- “Because He knew we couldn't have any of our own.”  
“Are you going to charge us with anything?” the father asks.  
Munch says: “We'll get back to you.”

Quoth the M.E.:  
“We have a variety of wounds, made with both human teeth and a bladed instrument, possibly a straight razor. Saliva on all wounds. Three different blood types.”  
“Saliva? Three different blood types?,” Bolander says, “What are they, vampires?”  
“That, I cannot tell you. What I can tell you is that the body was completely drained of blood.”  
Bolander huffs. Munch says nothing. After that, what is there to say?

Back to Jason's friends:  
“He was only into one thing,” says Lily.  
Oh, what's that?  
“This band,” Veronica replies, rolling her eyes, and twirling her hair around her finger.  
Which band?  
“You gotta light?”  
Sighing, Bolander produces his lighter. “How old are you?”  
“What was the name of this band he liked?” Munch demands before Sioux can answer.  
“Lost Souls?” says Sioux.  
“Who's that?” Bolander asks, “I've never heard of them.”  
“That's the name of the band. Lost Souls?”  
“Drop the attitude, sweetheart. We get it- we're square.”  
“I'm not giving you attitude.”  
“Then, why are you saying it like that?”  
“The name has a question mark at the end,” she says, taking a long drag from her cigarette, “It's called 'Lost Souls', question mark. Nothing was always talking about leaving and going to find them. I guess he finally did it.”  
Lost Souls, question mark hail from Missing Mile, North Carolina.  
“'Missing Mile'?” Munch says in the car, “'Lost Souls?' 'Missing Mile'? Who invents these names?” He slouches down in his seat, wraps his arms around himself, “I feel like I'm in a Tennessee Williams play.”  
“It's the South. Things have weird names.”  
“I know. I live in the South.”  
“Baltimore's not the South,” Bolander says, chewing his cigar, “Baltimore's Baltimore. This is the South.” He gestures at the landscape unwinding around them. Somehow, the winter air bites harder here. Munch says so.  
“It's the moisture.”  
“Baltimore's on the water.”  
“This is ambient moisture. It gets into the trees, the air. It doesn't circulate. Then, it gets cold and still, and it hangs around.”  
Munch is sure that this is bullshit, but can't say why. So, he doesn't say anything, just huddles into his coat against the thin breeze coming in through the window. The smell of Bolander's cigar lingers, but at least it's something familiar. This place is strange, in a way Munch can't describe. He caught a whiff of it at the crime scene, but attributed that to it being a dead kid. He closes his eyes, tries to sleep.  
But sleep won't come, like the song says. Finally, they get to where they're going. Munch gets out of the car, shaking himself out in his coat like a clapper in a bell.  
The house is a wreck. How it's still standing, Munch doesn't know. He rubs his arms. Bolander rings the bell. He rings it again. After a while, a young man comes to the door. He's so pale, Munch can see the pale blue veins in his temple. Against his will, Munch shivers. Bolander introduces them, and they're admitted into what can only be described as an 'anteroom', high ceilings scraped by the tops of windows, turn of the century furniture and overstuffed velvet cushions.  
“You're here about that little boy,” the young man says. He offers them a drink, and then coffee when that's declined. Bolander accepts, Munch does not.  
“How do you know about him?” Munch asks.  
“Well, he was here,” the young man says.  
Munch narrows his eyes. “What was your name again?”  
“Ghost.”  
“Ghost?”  
“My parents were eccentric.”  
Bolander gives Munch a look that claps shut his mouth.  
“You say he was here,” Bolander says.  
“Yes. He was here, and then his friends took him away.”  
“Took him away?”  
“I don't know where they were going.”  
“Well, why was he here?”  
“He was a fan, of the band. Of Lost Souls?”  
“Who are we talking about?” Munch snaps, then, more softly, “What was this kid's name?”  
“He said that it was 'Nothing'.”  
“Not Laine,” says Bolander.  
“No. But he was here, too,” murmurs Ghost.  
“He was here?” Bolander raises his eyebrows, and Munch almost jumps out of his seat.  
“Yes. But not-”  
That's when the other young man comes into the room. This one is almost as pale as Ghost, but his hair is dark, and his features are sharp. There's a nastiness about him that Munch feels more than he sees.  
“And who are you?” Munch asks.  
“Steve.”  
“Steve 'what'?”  
“Steve Finn.” Steve crosses his arms over his chest. “Who the hell are you?”  
They introduce themselves again, and Steve sits down next to Ghost. “Why are you here?” Steve asks.  
“We're here regarding the disappearance of a young man, a Laine Petersen,” says Bolander, “Your friend told us that he was here, with another boy, Jason.”  
“Here in spirit,” Ghost pipes up.  
“What do you mean by that?” Bolander asks.  
“I mean, that Nothing brought him with him.”  
“But not in body?” Munch says.  
“No. He was already gone.”  
“What do you know about that?”  
“That's it,” says Steve, “we're not saying anything else without a lawyer.”  
They know something. Of that, there is no doubt.  
“Let me talk to them,” Munch says in the car.  
“No.”  
“No? What do you mean, 'no'?”  
“I mean, in the negative. No, you will not talk to them. They're cagey, they're rattled, and that blond one with the stupid name is ready to flip.”  
“Then, let me talk to him; he's a push-over.”  
Bolander sighs. “You can have a few minutes. But I'm telling you right now, you will not get anything out of him.”  
“How do you know?”  
“He's,” Bolander takes his hand off of the wheel for a second to twirl the air around his head with his finger.  
“And?”  
“You have to develop a rapport with someone like that.”  
“And I can't do that?”  
Bolander snorts, but says nothing else.  
Back in Baltimore, they split up the two of them. Steve goes into one room; Ghost goes into another. After a few minutes, Munch brings Ghost a cup of coffee.  
“You're very kind,” says Ghost, not in thanks, but as though it were just a fact.  
“So, tell me what you meant earlier, when you said that Laine was there in spirit.”  
Ghost takes a sip of his coffee. “Do you believe that everything you do in life leaves a trace?”  
“Are you talking about karma?”  
“Sort of. Like, something you carry around with you.”  
“I'm not sure.”  
“It does. If you do something serious enough, it goes with you, everywhere you go. Like a stain, on your soul.”  
“And you can see these stains.”  
“Sometimes,” Ghost says, ducking his head like he doesn't want to brag. “If it's bad enough.”  
“Tell me what happened,” Munch says gently, leaning forward.  
“They killed that boy,” Ghost says, and looks down, “I know they did.”  
“Who?”  
“Nothing, and his friends. There were three of them. There was a short one. He's old. He doesn't look it, but he's a lot older than you'd imagine. He has brown hair, with colored streaks in it. Green eyes. Dead man's collar,” Ghost mutters, looking far away, “And the two others. One was tall, one was short. One had a sharp face, like a fox,” Ghost muses, “The other was like a little baby doll. They had,” Ghost looks down again, colors, “other distinguishing features, but I don't think those will help you. They were going to New Orleans. To meet a friend. A very, very old friend. And the little one,” the far-away look, “he has an appointment in Samarra.”  
“What does that mean?” Though, Munch knows.  
Ghost shakes his head. “Doesn't matter. There've been others, but you guessed that.”  
“What do you know about Laine?”  
Ghost shrugs. “Nothing. Just what I told you. I'm sorry about his death, but there's nothing I can do for him." Then, “You can ask me something. If you want to.”  
“Why do they do it?”  
Ghost shakes his head. “They have to. But they don't have to do it like this. I agree with you, there. They don't have to be the way they are.”  
“How's that?” Munch says softly.  
“They don't have to be cruel. They don't have to enjoy it so much,” Ghost brightens, “But ask me something else. Something you want to know.”  
What happens to me? But he can't say that.  
“Oh,” Ghost laughs, “you'll cross this great, big land. You're brave- to leave everything behind. To start something new. You're going to do a lot of good. You're going to shed a lot of tears, but not all of them will be bad. It won't always be bad. You'll think that you're forgotten, but no one will ever forget you, John Munch,” he shakes his head, “But you won't solve this case. It'll take a fox to fox a fox. And she's red as a fox,” then, Ghost laughs, keeps laughing.  
That's when the door opens. It's Gee.  
“It's federal,” he says, to Munch and to Bolander, who's also there.  
“What?” says Bolander.  
“The M.O. showed up on a cold case in New York. It's out of our hands.”  
Bolander swears. Munch feels himself go pale. His mouth opens and closes, words trying to reach his lips, but not making it. Finally, he says, “I know someone at the Bureau. Let me make a call.”

“Is what you just told me true?”  
“Of course not. What, do you think I'm crazy?”

The facts are these:  
Dana Scully doesn't die. Don't ask medical science to explain it. She gives up asking- science or God- to explain sometime around 2030. By then, she's past sixty, and she hasn't felt the passage of a year since- She cannot remember. She can't remember a lot of things. You stop remembering when you stop thinking that you have to. Until the turn of the century, she'd thought that she was normal. She'd thought her life to be normal, and she'd remembered and forgotten the way that a normal person would. But when you live- not forever- no, not forever, she scolds herself- surely not- you have to think about your time. You have to think about what you want to keep, and you have to make an effort.  
Nothing hasn't learned this, yet. He's still a child. And he doesn't have the benefit of several decades' law enforcement experience. He might keep up on technological advances, understand science and the way DNA analysis has progressed, but he was never a detective. He never had to detect anything.  
Strip away the trappings of office, and what you're left with is the desire to learn. This is true, whether you're talking law enforcement or medicine. Scully wants to learn. It's all she ever wanted. In the past, she's wanted to believe, but belief without learning is just faith. And she's had faith. Faith abandoned her around the time that she noticed Mulder's face breaking out in fine lines while hers remained smooth. That was the first crack. In that stone-firm edifice. Then, Mulder's heart weakened, as hers remained strong. Then, Mulder died, while she remained alive. And strong. And young. Now, all is learning. All is empirical evidence. All is what she can observe.  
What she observes, as a mall security guard, her latest job, because they don't ask for a social security number on the form, is three men supporting the tilting frame of another person. She's been doing this- in one form or another- for so long that she doesn't even think. In a trice, she there, holding up her tazer, shouting, “Freeze, motherfuckers!”  
One freezes, the little fucker with the round face. The one next to him looks at his friend, but keeps moving. The small one with the raccoon eyes doesn't even look at her. He's the one she tazes. All of them gasp. Something tells her to hit him again, and she does. Once more, as he shakes, his head thrown back, his tongue out, and smoke rises from his chest.  
More than she notices it, she feels it. Somehow, she feels it. She feels the life leave him, blow out like the smoke curling up out of his sternum. The other two are watching, slack-jawed.  
“You want some of this?” she yells, pointlessly, she knows, because they're like limbs. You extinguish the will driving them, and they're nothing. She knows well enough: always go for the head.


End file.
